Jim Inhofe: “we have three groups of speakers having to do with the vote that will take place at 11:45 a.m., and during that time I…”

“we have three groups of speakers having to do with the vote that will take place at 11:45 a.m., and during that time I will take the first 15 minutes, and then other Members will have amendments. The first two amendments will be the Schatz amendment and then my amendment. I did have the intention of having more time and was going to kind of rejoice a little bit because, right now, I understand we are about to get the information on suggestions that the Secretary of Defense has after working over a realignment of some of our resources, particularly in Europe. This is kind of interesting because this is something that 18 years ago this year I tried to do unsuccessfully when Jim Jones was the Supreme Allied Commander, and we were not able to get it done. After 18 years, we are going to try it again. I will be speaking about that issue at 4 p.m. today, and it is a significant one. Today we are considering amendments to our national defense authorization bill. We are still working on a managers' package, but as I previously noted, we have already agreed to more than 140 bipartisan amendments. Let me be more specific than that. This is the first time we have done this. We have had amendments to a lesser degree in the past. This is the first time that the entire bill has been put together by Members of the U.S. Senate.…”